This is Liam Guilar's Blog, mostly about poetry, mine and other people's, and anything else of interest. Over the years it has unintentionally developed into an online poetry resource, check the names in the sidebar but Bunting, Yeats, Pound, Joyce, Tennyson and the medieval poets get fair coverage. Lady Godiva and Me was a sequence of poems that linked Lady Godiva, both the historical Godgifu and the legendary Lady G, to a character growing up in the city of Coventry after the second world war.
You can see a short film about the collection Here.
My most recent book of poems, Anhaga is published by Vanzenopress and avialable or my website. Further information, full length articles and sample poems are available on my website Here .

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Simon Armitage’s translation of Deor demonstrates what happens when a
pattern, in this case alliteration, imposes its demands on the vocabulary of a
poem. It’s also a good example of how poetic sounding images can be empty place
holders in a line.

Weland the goldsmithknew grief’s weight.

That strong-minded manwas no stranger to misery,

his loyal soul-mateswere sorrow and longing,

a hurt like winterweathered his heart

The original opening line: Welund him be wurman wræces cunnade,

Is literally: Weland, through serpents,
(experienced/explored/put to the test)(exile/persecution/misery)

It has exercised the ingenuity of many commentators who try to
explain what those serpents are or were doing, so dropping them makes sense,and since Weland is no longer well known,so does introducing him.But the first two B lines are padding: the original does not mark time.

The warning bells start at goldsmith. That’s what Weland was in one version of the story. However here, rather than the more
familiar ‘smith’, it seems to be padding like “loyal soul-mates” in line 3:
because the modern poet’s choice of alliterative pattern sets up the need for
two alliterating sounds in each half line. (‘Loyal soul-mates” translates
“companions”: can someone be your soul mate if he, she, or it is disloyal?)

The new alliterative pattern requires ‘weight’ to be at the end of the line.While OE exuberantly strikes compounds the way Raymond chandler coined
similes, “grief’s weight” sounds vague compared to ‘knew misery” and seems to
be filling a place in the B line so that ‘misery’ can occur in the second one. “No
stranger to …” is a syntactical cliché and gains nothing from having misery
stuck at the end.

a hurt like winterweathered his
heart

sounds consciously ‘poetic’ in the worst,
archaic way.Perhaps the
alliterative pattern forces the syntax. But ‘A hurt like
winter’ translates the simple compound wintercealde wræce, (Winter-cold misery)
which I thought was one of his companions, along with sorrow and longing.

The problem with the simile is that it defuses
the image. Misery that is Winter-cold
evokes northern Europe: dark, cold, painful, cutting, inexorable, deadly. Something utterly beyond your
controlwhich can only be suffered.But itpasses.

But with “Like winter” the image evaporates in a multiplication of conflicting associations.
If you were an Anglo-Saxon and you
got your planning right, winter
could be a good time: no fighting (until Guthrum changed the rules)not a lot of work to do outside, and
inside the firelight, communal life, story telling, friendly ways of keeping
warm, resting for the hard work that comes in spring.

For a modern reader winter contains all
sorts of good things as well as bad.

If “A hurt like winter” doesn’t work,
neither does ‘weathered his heart’. Presumably withered was discarded because
of the Winter/weather associations, but weathering produces all kinds of
effects, some of them spectacularly beautiful. The idea that sorrow, longing
and being hamstrung make you into a work of art may reach for a suitably grim
irony, but seems wrong here. The line has too many possible readings, too many
of them contradictory for it to work.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Although labeled in the online index as “ A
poem by Simon Armitage”the poem Deor isactually a reasonably faithful
translation of the OEDeor from The Exeter Book. This is explained in a notein the side bar on the page the poem appears in the online edition. In the print edition I see no such information. I’m not suggesting anything underhand is happening.I’m just wondering if this is a claim
that the poet who translates, remakes and therefore owns the new text or do we
assume that all readers of the LRB know Deor is Old English?

I could get to like the way Armitage has broken the alliterative
pattern of the original and alliterates each line of the first verse on the
last word, which the original doesn’t.I’m not sure I like “a hurt like winter” which sounds too vague, and
I don’t understand “my name was Deor "(even if it's faithful to the original) or “and [she] imagined misfortunes” but all this is irrelevant. It’s an awkward gnarled poem to translate andI couldn’t produce a
translation which read this fluently.The people who can tell you how accurate it is are the very people who
don’t need it, so the question is
who does? Who is the intended audience?

Which means I’m most intrigued by the fact
that it’s been published in what seems to be such a prestigious market.It’s a neat translation of an obscurepoem, famous for its refrain (which here
sounds unnecessarily clunky) and its allusiveness, but which doesn't seem to offer a modern reader much if anything.

So has it been published because it’s written by Simon Armitage and to advertise his new book?There are numerous translations currently available. Does this version offer new insight into the poem or a new
way of reading the original? Does it suggest the writer went “digging for the
treasure” in Pound’s version of translation and recast the original in a way
that’s alive as a poem for a modern reader?

I’d answer no to both those last two questions and
the reason for the negative is simple.Deor is famously allusive. It is assumed, these days, that the original
audience must have known the stories of Weland, Beodohilde et al. (It wasn’t Weland’s hopes which were hamstrung (as the Armitage version states): he was. Weland then took his revenge by
killing Niðhad’s sons and raping his daughter, Beodohilde, who was driven out her
wits by her pregnancy. Or at least that’s the familiar notes attempting to
explain the poem).

“We have heard” the poet repeats working
variations on the phrase, but “we” reading in the twenty first century, are not
the “we” who heard or knew. Stripped of
original context or contextualizing notes, the poem on its own makes no sense beyond a vague suggestion
that because a list of (unknown) people survived (equally unknown) bad things in
a vague past the (unknown) poet’s (stated) bad times may also pass.

Look at me says the poem in the LRB: I’m a
translation! I’m the ghost of Anglo-Saxon Poetry talking a walk on part in a
museum.I’m the painfully obvious
replica they send out when the original is too valuable to move. I’m
quaint,I’m awkward. You won’t
understand me, but don’t
worry.I look old and different
and that’s enough.Look at the me, the ghost of “Anglo-Saxon Poetry” with its non Anglo-Saxon
alliteration.Look at my
typography. How quaint. How obviously Old.

But since
we all know this Anglo-Saxon layoutis a modern editorial convention, with its half lines and breaks, why
not ditch it?

I feel like I’m being asked to admire the
combination of the badly faked replica of a museum piece and a fine musician
demonstrating her ability to play scales.

Neither of which is something I’d willingly
part with money to see.

Or is it indicative of the fact that many readers don't expect a 'poem' to make sense anymore?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

BE CAREFUL OF THE HUDLOOM Sadly the word HUDLOOM does not appear in the OED. But it should damn it...it sounds like it deserves a film, directed by John Carpenter. The Hudloom and the Drown fight for the souls of our young heroes in a dirty foggy city where the sun never shines and it's always dusk. Our beautiful heroine is seduced by The Hudloom's undeniable charms into a descending spiral of drugs and immorality, while The Drown edges closer to killing her lover in a disused church on the edge of a disused graveyard at the end of a disused street which is littered with the parts of broken down cars....which are therefore disused cars though that sounds almost as odd as "No Body is Above the Law."

Commercial news teams
swarmed like flies around a honey pot.Reporters from Spiff news, who have recently been
accused of redefining “eye witness”, were keen to thrust recording devices up
the noses of anyone who opened his or her door.In subsequent Spiff bulletins, Tom “an eyewitness”
announced ”I didn’t see anything” while Doreen “another eyewitness”eagerly told viewers “Something
definitely happened. I didn’t see or hear anything but something definitely
happened.”

A televised debate was
quickly convened between unknown academics who are experts at having
opinions.Dr. D, famous in very
limited circles for his seminal work “Foucault and The Bath Sponge: modernity,
postmodernity and plastic ducks” debated with Dr. A, whose justifiably unknown “Derrida was French and didn’t like
Cheese: nationality, rationality and diary intolerance” is considered essential
reading by nobody. Both agreed they had never heard of Drown but while they
were agreeing on the undoubted significance of “Hetero Normative Patriarchal Discourse”
the program was hijacked by tweets from a retired underwater hockey player who
announced that Drown is the evil mastermind behind the doping scandal in sport
and the resignation of the Pope.

A viewer poll showed there was unanimous
disagreement, but when Dr. A agreed and said Down was also probably behind
global warming, 98% of tweeters tweeteed
to say she was being silly.

Attempts to interview Noddy,
who has just been appointed Mayor of ToyTown, failed because “Yous guys have
been so mean to me. So I’m not talking to yous”. He claimed he was also busy
not talking with environmental groups who are questioning the sanity of his
plans to build a space ship terminal, intergalactic gambling casino, red light
district and formula one race track on an unnamedsand bank that sometimes appears off the coast at very low tide.
“You’re all so negative’ he said.

No further sightings
of Drown have been reported. Mr Plod says this just goes to show how
dangerously clever this criminal genius must be.

The crisis is ongoing.
Who knows when or where Drown will strike next.

Let us praise and give thanks to the second hand book seller, custodians
of dusty magic, and forgive him or
her for driving me to financial ruin, since that’s nobody’s fault but mine. And
forgive the grumpy ones who mumble when I leave without buying anything, and be
understanding of the ones who find it difficult to part with any of their
books,and maybe even forgive that
really irritating one who will remain nameless but who doesn’t bother to open
his shop.

But let us praisethose who can produce the book I need,who wrap it so carefully, (unlike
Amazon.co.uk) and mail it from
Glasgow or Calcutta, Singapore or Solihull, let us give thanks for the
absurdity of Bookfinder.com which allows me to browse for books I need in
countries I will never visit and
let us not forget the miracle of the international postal service, which is one
of mankind’s greatest inventions, and which whisks my book across the globe to
the laughing man who delivers it: “Another book? Do you eat them? “

And let us praise that endless mystery: the
second hand book. Let us not pause too long on the smell and feel of them for
fear of sensual distraction, but
consider the faded, the scribbled in, or the pristine (pages uncut for a century),books with missing plates, books badly
paginated, books unpaginated, books read to destruction and skillfully or badly
rebuilt, and of course the
unexpected ‘signed by the author’ “To Bill”. The grammar textbook printed in Calcuttain 1901. The book of Tennyson’s poems
presented to Mabel on her twenty first, with love from Fred, who hopes she’ll
like it and to see her soon, Bradley’s Lectures on Poetry given as a prize to
the Dux of mathematics at the Glasgow Grammar schoolin 1916/7.

So reading Tennyson, In Memoriam ironically,
I wonder about Fred and Mabel. Why
was he writing from South Africa? Did they ever meet? Did they read Tennyson to one
another? And what might that have
led to?Did the bright young maths
student ever read his prize:did
he die on the western front within the year. Sad letters someone left inside a book saying Dad had died:
the shopping list that makes me wonder what was being cooked that night; the
scribbled love poem on the flyleaf;the explosive “nonsense”with three exclamations marks and “news to me” in the margins of a
biography. The strange calculation
which reaches no conclusions.

Books pass through lives, are lived with, sometimes
loved,sometimes tokens of love or
remembrance,valued beyond their
price or content, until they come to rest here, temporarily. They will eventually
move on.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

So if you come to the coast, beware of Drown. Not sure if it's The Drown, or A Drown, or whether there are secret gangs of Drown, made up of many drowns, prowling the beaches, kicking sand in the faces of puny weaklings, intimidating topless bathers and making the surfers nervous.

The next time any journalist or politician starts to bang on about the failure of literacy in schools they should be locked in a room with a year's supply of Gold Coast Bulletins and not allowed out until they have shown they can explain and correct all the errors.